A Fold Apart Preview

Recently I got to attend EGLX in Toronto, Canada, which is a newer convention for us Canadians to celebrate all things gaming. While I was there, I got to try out a bunch of indie games and speak to the developers with the first being A Fold Apart from Lightning Rod Games. The demo I got to play was quite short, but this game has a lot of potential and is definitely on my radar now.

A Fold Apart is a 3D puzzle game about long-distance relationships and the hardships that come along with it. While talking to one of the developers, he told me that the idea for the story came from his own personal experience with long-distance relationships. This makes it a much more personal game for the developers and adds that realism to the experience which I saw towards the end of the demo.

The gameplay surrounding A Fold Apart is a cool and very interesting concept because it involves folding paper (hence the name). It begins with the main character falling into a dream-like state where I saw his significant other, but I was unable to get to them. Moving right or left with the right thumbstick, I was able to pull the paper in the direction needed to bridge the gap between the two of them. The other side of the paper had beams and walkways I was able to match together and lay over top of the page I was already on. Once I realized I had the correct fold, I confirmed the placement with the right trigger and continued on my quest to get to her.

The demo continues with similar, but clever, puzzles as I tried to get closer and closer to her while adding in new puzzle elements. One that I found really cool, which shows the uniqueness of this game, was being able to go on the other side of the page and then flip the entire page instead of folding it to solve one of the puzzles. While it wasn’t in the demo, the developer told me that it will be more than just folding and flipping pages: you will also be folding from various angles with more features to come. Hearing that gave me reassurance that there are going to be some really awesome puzzles in this game since I was already impressed with the ones that I got to play in the demo.

One key reason A Fold Apart originally piqued my interest is that the music is from the same person who worked on Celeste. The Celeste soundtrack has quickly become one of my favourite videogame soundtracks of all time and you can definitely hear some influences in this game. I can’t speak too much on the music since the demo was short, but it’s already sounding great and similar to the electronic/piano sound Celeste got so right. The art style is also really cute, runs great and fits this world of folding paper and origami mechanics.

Once I finally got to her, I snapped out of the dream sequence as I got a text notification in the ‘real world’ from her. Most of the story is going to take place within these text messages – as long-distance relationships do – and as the story progresses, the puzzles will start to change and evolve. From that one text exchange I saw in the demo, it seems this is going to be a rough, emotional journey but a real one that might hit too close to home for people in similar situations.

A Fold Apart by Lightning Rod Games will be out this fall on Apple Arcade and will be coming to other platforms in early 2020.